Insights

<p>I write about health issues for the St. Louis Beacon. My challenge is to convince diverse groups to engage in constructive dialogue about tackling health care access, disparities and costs.I'm sure we all are wrestling with variations of this challenge. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that t

<p>In 2002, when I was covering medicine for The Orange County Register, we produced a series of stories called <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/features/doctor/doctor00407cci1.shtml">"Docto… Without Discipline"</a> that uncovered serious flaws in the way the Medical Board of California handled complaints from the public about physicians.</p>

<p>My National Health Journalism Fellowship project involves exploring whether an approach taken by Grand Junction, western Colorado's largest city, could work elsewhere and possibly be a model for low-cost, high-quality near-universal health care, at least until something significant is done at the federal level.</p>

<p>I'm looking forward to going to Los Angeles Oct. 4!</p>
<p>Working with my colleague, Mariana Alvarado, I'll be reporting on a project about the link between obesity and poverty in children. The Tucson area has a higher-than-average rate of poverty, which disproportionately affects ethnic minorities. Obesity is widespread in those populations and is particularly rampant among Hispanics and American Indians, who are developing type 2 diabetes at increasingly young ages.</p>

<p>Through three separate stories I will delve into some of Wisconsin's most poignant health disparities, including infant mortality rates that are worse than those in some third-world countries, one Madison African-American community's grassroots campaign to combat smoking through photodocumentation and support groups, and the lack of health care faced by many Latino dairy workers, who now help prop up the state's farming industry.

<p>The yearning for a male child in some Asian cultures -- Indian, Korean and Chinese in particular – runs deep. A male child is perceived as someone who will be a breadwinner when he grows up and take care of his parents in their old age, someone who will also continue the family line. In India, a girl child is viewed as a net loss to the family, mostly because when she is given away in marriage, she is expected to bring with her a dowry, a practice that still persists, despite the fact that it was banned in that country many years ago.</p>

<p>Recently, at a meeting of social workers serving African immigrants, I brought up the issue of mental health. “We don’t have a problem with mental illness in the African community,” a caseworker told me, citing the resilience of a population largely familiar with extreme poverty, human rights abuses, and instability.</p>

<p>A little known Oregon law requires hospitals to provide written notification of serious adverse events to all victims (or families of victims). The law is largely ignored; last year 40 such written notifications were recorded, though national studies of medical errors predict there likely were over 1,000 such events at Oregon hospitals.</p>

<p>Clair Jordan, the executive director of the Texas Nurses Association for the past 30 years, has seen nurses in a lot of difficult situations.

<p>An intriguing New York Times blog <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/the-fries-that-bind-us/?sr…; today highlights a geo-coded map created by <a href="http://www.weathersealed.com/">blogger</a&gt; Stephen Worley showing that the farthest away any American in the contiguous 48 states can get from a McDonalds is a mere 107 miles — a mere two-hour drive from a <a href="http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html#0… Big Mac</a>.</p>